Lunchtime Snap: The Top Five Gifts This Holiday Season

By Cheryl Tan

Cookies and perfume have elbowed out men’s and women apparel from the top 10 list of holiday gifts that Americans are giving this year, according to a new survey released this morning.

Consumers may be giving more cookies than clothing this holiday season. (Credit: Getty Images)

In a survey of 1,000 people, some 34.7% listed toys as their number one gift this year, followed by electronics (26.8%), children’s clothes (26.7%), video games (18.1%) and gift cards (12%), according to America’s Research Group, a consumer-research firm based in Charleston, S.C.

The categories of men’s and women’s apparel, which typically make at least the top seven gift items each holiday season, were missing for the first time in six or seven years, says C. Britt Beemer, chief executive of America’s Research Group. Neither category made the list of top 10 this year, in fact — the categories were displaced by cookies and candy, which scored 12.8%, up from under 5% during a similar poll conducted the weekend before Christmas in 2007, and perfume, cologne and fragrances, which scored 13.2%, up from just under 9% last year.

This shift away from giving men’s and women’s apparel has happened partly because parents and adults have said they are cutting back on presents to one other and are instead focusing their gift-giving on children this holiday season. Some 26.7% of those surveyed said children’s clothing was a top gift this year, up from 15.9% in 2007, Mr. Beemer says. It was the first time in the 18 years Mr. Beemer has done the survey that men’s and women’s apparel was not listed as a top five gift item in any of the four weekends leading up to Christmas.

“When you’re concerned about your job, apparel becomes a thing that you don’t have to have,” he says. “When the consumer is struggling, most people feel they have enough apparel to get through a season.”

Clothing also has taken a backseat due to a rise in giving of perfume, cookies and candy, which Mr. Beemer attributes to “the gift-card meltdown.” Consumers are expected to sharply dial back on giving gift cards this season, in part because they have been worried about purchasing a gift card from a retailer only to have it go out of business – only 12% of those Mr. Beemer surveyed this past weekend said they would give gift cards, down from 23.8% in 2007.

“If you’re not going to give a friend, niece or nephew a gift card and you don’t want to give them cash, it’s easy to give them something to eat or call up their mother to ask what’s their favorite fragrance,” he says. “It’s an easy gift to give if you’re not sure what a person really likes.”